VIDEO: HAND-CRAFTED COMPUTER PAYS TRIBUTE TO THE DAWN OF COMPUTERS

Sweden's Love Hultén is probably best known for their wonderfully retro gaming creations and, with their latest design, they have done a one-off PET De Lux project. The designer and craftsman have paid tribute to a grand-daddy of home computing, the Commodore PET 2001 all-in-one personal computer, released in 1977.

Commodore's PET – Personal Electronic Transactor – 2001 was an angular metal box containing a small monochrome display, a built-in cassette tape player for loading in software such as games and productivity applications, as well as a modern-looking chiclet-style keyboard.

Back in the late 1970s the PET 2001 was a game-changer, opening the door for bedroom coders and helping to set the scene for the personal computing revolution to come. This handmade and one-of-a-kind tribute is housed in American walnut, and retains the chiclet keyboard and what looks like the cassette machine found in the original PET.

The PET De Lux comes with two controllers which feature wireless modern convenience, and one of the custom controllers was inspired by the TAC-2 joystick. The heart of the modern design has a Rasberry Pi 3, and an 8-inch colour screen, rather than monochrome, that uses barrel distortion to mimic curvature.

There is a games system emulator that's included that will deliver classics from the Commodore, Nintendo and other systems of yesteryear, launched using the cassette player naturally. Hultén said that the cassette player itself is purely decorative and its push down controls actually map to various emulator inputs.

While some of Hultén's creations have been made available to buy, the PET De Lux isn't one of them. You'll have to make do with the video below.